Unarmed: Holsworthy

This next suburb is absolutely massive. Lucky for me and the souls of my feet, the majority of it is off limits to visitors.

Holsworthy

Holsworthy is a Southwest Sydney suburb, easily accessible by means of a thirty-three minute train ride from Central. When you get in, the station feels like it's in the middle of the bush, save for the multistory carpark just next door.

Now, the reason that this huge suburb (Sydney's largest, from what I can tell) is for the most part off limits, is that everything south of the train station is owned by the army. The vast majority of Holsworthy is made up of the 54,000 acre Holsworthy Barracks and Military Reserve, which conveniently has a station entry. I didn't go any closer as I figure the military doesn't normally like members of the public sticking a camera through their fence.

Just to put the scale of Holsworthy in perspective, it's over 26km long. That's equivalent to drawing a straight line from Parramatta to Bondi! Of the entire suburb, this is the bit that folks like me can access. Now that's one chunky suburb.

Anyway, let's move on before my house gets raided by the AFP.

Head north from the station, through the rather elaborate multistory carpark,

and you'll hit a new housing estate right at the brink of the bush.

I found it a little odd.

This estate appears to be populated exclusively with really tall townhouses, all painted in various greys.

Unconventional? Yes.

Ugly? Possibly.

But I can see the appeal, especially considering you're just a few steps away from the station. Plus if you ever have to call 000, the army can be at your door in minutes.

Curiously, this new development is entirely separate from the older residential section of Holsworthy. From here, the map showed that there was a path through the bushland to get to that older bit.

That didn't appear to be true, with a rather stale looking pond being the only thing through the path.

That meant continuing north,

until I hit the main road.

From here, and by this rather fetching bottlebrush tree,

you can cross the metal pedestrian bridge (which pushed back on me with a concerningly high amount of flex, presumably after expanding in the sun all morning).

This leads to where my path through the bush was originally supposed to lead me to,

and into the more established bit of suburban Holsworthy.

This is typical late twentieth century suburbia, with well kept houses on moderate blocks of land.

As I continued through this side of Holsworthy, a horse statue in the distance caught me eye.

This is Remount Park, dedicated to the Australian light horse brigades of the First World War.

There's a few little educational signs and plaques around the park talking about the soldiers and their horses. Apparently Australia sent 120,000 horses overseas for the war, but only brought one back, leaving the rest overseas.